Despite the continuous hard work that educators and organizations undertake to develop the skill-base necessary to defend our national assets, it has become increasingly obvious that the United States and the rest of the world are ill prepared for an all out cyber attack. One very valuable contribution to creating a workforce capable of addressing this important issue is the cyber defense exercises which simulate the very environments our students will be charged with defending in their careers. In this paper, we explore cyber defense exercises from an educational perspective and investigate how recent work in this area can be leveraged to improve the security posture of the nation.